Damaged hard drive ?

[Guest]

I bought a new pc a couple of years ago, with Windows XP Home edition, well
since then i have made lots of upgrades, well actually the only original
hardware i have in is the floppy and hard drive, well i say hard drive , that
has just died on me so i bought a new SATA drive yesterday. Well my question
is, I still have the original licence key for my XP Home but i can nolonger
use the back up cd i got with my system as its a totally different machine
now, i never got the original XP Home cd withit, only the licence and key
(sticker on the pc case) No cd, no windows, can anyone advise me to what my
options are cos i really dont have money to spend on new XP software ?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Handy]

I bought a new pc a couple of years ago, with Windows XP Home edition, well
since then i have made lots of upgrades, well actually the only original
hardware i have in is the floppy and hard drive, well i say hard drive ,
that
has just died on me so i bought a new SATA drive yesterday. Well my
question
is, I still have the original licence key for my XP Home but i can
nolonger
use the back up cd i got with my system as its a totally different machine
now, i never got the original XP Home cd withit, only the licence and key
(sticker on the pc case) No cd, no windows, can anyone advise me to what
my
options are cos i really dont have money to spend on new XP software ?
Thanks in advance.

When you previously upgraded the motherboard and CPU you must have contacted
MS regarding activation. If by backup CD you mean an OEM recovery CD then
that should allow you to reinstall Windows XP on your new hard drive but you
need to phone MS for a new product key that will allow you to activate
Windows. However, if by backup CD you mean one that you made then you
probably can't reinstall Windows from that although if it was a complete
image of your old hard drive you may be able to restore that image. Although
you have the licence and key, and are only using it on one PC, if you
haven't got an OEM restore CD then MS will expect you to buy a new Windows
XP CD.

 

[Guest]

A recovery cd for the original MB will not work if the MB was replaced with
a diffrent one.If the MB is original,contact the mfg for a replacement
cd.Sounds
like the xp cd was recovery for old board,from here,you'll need to purchase a
retail copy of xp (full version) unless an older windows OS cd is available.